“Yes.”

“Come back tomorrow. Think how. How will you do this? If I believe, I let you save me.”

He already had a plan. She listened. He wanted to make it possible for her to escape. The look on his face. Once, he touched her hand. He was for real or he was a good actor. When she got out, she would come to him, and they would go to the police together. He told her to look for his pickup at the back of a parking lot, a place he was pretty sure no one would be looking for her. When she got to him, he’d have a blanket to hide her under in the cargo bed. Then they could go to the police. He made her promise she would come and not risk her safety any further. But why did he want her to come to him? Why not, if he could help her escape, would he just not set her free entirely?

If she did not go to him, he could not take her to Bochko. And he might be taking her to Bochko. This could be the test she would fail.

But she had to do it. The chance would surely never come again. If he could get her out, she’d go to meet him. She’d decide what to do about this Henry when she had more information. She still wasn’t sure what risk he posed to her. Yet.

] 30 [

Late afternoon

“Take those bloody handcuffs off of my constable,” Hazel Micallef said.

Commander LeJeune told her prisoner to present the cuffs. She unlocked them and Jenner rubbed her wrists together, looking sheepish.

LeJeune said, “Detective Inspector, do you think I have no idea what’s going on in my own back acre?”

“I’m sorry your slow-moving investigation has been affected by my own. But you have no idea –”

“I know about this casino, Detective. There are illegal casinos everywhere. We’ve been gathering evidence on three of the local ones for almost a year.”

“This one’s different.”

“You’re to pack up your van and get off native land. You’re lucky you didn’t blow my case. Go.”

“Take it up with OPS brass. We’re not moving.”

Greene and Spere were watching her from the side door of the van. Greene came forward and introduced himself. He even fished out a card.

LeJeune ignored it. Gone were the collegiate courtesies. “I don’t care who you are,” she said. “This is a treaty violation. It also shows a stunning lack of courtesy.”

“Look,” Greene said, “we’re in place. I think you’re going to want to see what happens, Commander. I don’t believe you have all the facts.”

“I will have them presently.” She snapped the cuffs shut and replaced them in her belt. “Constable Bellecourt,” she said into her radio. “Come in.”

“Bellecourt,” came the constable’s voice.

“I need you to secure Church Bay Road at both ends.”

“I’ll put Arnette and Mastaw on it.”

LeJeune keyed off. “If you insist on staying, then stay you will,” she said.

“I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

“I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

When Hazel returned to the van, Spere planted himself an inch from her face.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Call her back.”

“Why?”

“Call the commander back.”

She looked at him like he was crazy, but she reopened the door. “Commander LeJeune. One of my investigators would like to talk to you.”

LeJeune hesitated, but then stopped and turned to face them again. Spere replaced Hazel in the doorway. “Keep your eye on that screen,” he said. Wingate’s triangle had been motionless for about a minute. To LeJeune he said, “Could you come here and radio your colleague again?”

LeJeune approached and took her radio out.

“Just keep her on for a minute or so.”

LeJeune wore a distrustful look, but she understood that something was changing. “Bellecourt, come in.”

The other officer’s voice came through. “Bellecourt.” LeJeune looked at Spere, who was gazing over his shoulder. He rotated his index finger at her, to tell her to keep going.

“Have you called in the two cars?”

“Mastaw is on his way. I’m just calling in Constable Young.”

The whole time she was talking, Spere waved her away from the van, frantically flapping his whole hand at her. She stepped away, five paces, ten. He waved her farther back.

“Good then,” she said. “Are you off-shift now?”

“Just left,” said Bellecourt.

Spere made the okay sign with his thumb and finger, and LeJeune said goodbye. “What the hell is going on?”

“I had to make sure,” he said. “There was interference.” He half-turned. “Did you see it?”

“It flickered,” Hazel said, “Wingate’s triangle.”

“Every time your constable spoke. And the interference was as strong with you standing right beside the van as twenty metres away. So it’s not your radio that’s causing it. Or our equipment.”

“Causing what,” the commander said frostily.

“We have a man in Sparrow’s right now,” Spere said. “He’s got a tracking device on him. When you were talking to your constable, the signal fluctuated. More or less in time with her transmissions.”

“Why?” said Hazel, leaning in to look at the screen. “Oh … oh, shit.” She turned back to LeJeune. “She’s under there, for Christ’s sake.” LeJeune’s radio was rising into position. “No. Put that down. Just go find Lee Travers.”

“You think he’s still here?” said LeJeune, her face registering new knowledge.

“Who’s Travers?” said Greene, but Hazel was plunging past him with her hand out.

“Give me your keys,” she said to LeJeune. Spere kept calling to her from inside of the van. “Hazel – Hazel … you better come here.”

“Tell me what is going on,” LeJeune said.

“Girls,” Hazel said to her. “That’s what your constable is involved in, with her hunky fiancé. Kidnapped girls. Now give me your keys.”

“Shoes,” said Reserve Constable Lydia Bellecourt. They were standing in the laundry room with the stairs that led up to the house. Wingate kicked them off and she leaned over them. “Which one?”

“Which one what.”

“Are you carrying a tracker up your ass, Detective? Because I can check there.”

“Left.”

She pulled up the insole from the left shoe and unpeeled the tracker from its underside. It was a sticker with a tiny metal transmitter stuck in the middle of it. A small red light shone along its rim. She put it on a step and smashed it with the butt of the Ruger. “Anything else I should know about?” she asked.

“The second that signal fails, they’ll be on their way.”

“They’ll be at least twenty metres off. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what they do. Come on.”

She held her hand out in mock gentility, and he walked ahead of her. “Did your partners find you in the police service,” he asked, “or did they put you through the academy to get you in place here?”

“Not partners.”

“What?”

“Partner. I’m monogamous. Not like these sluts and the garbage that fuck them.”

“Sorry, my mistake. Partner. Did he make you what you are, Lydia?”

She held the gun on him as he ascended the stairs to the television room. Then she steered him down the hall that had the bedrooms in it, and to another door. It led down to another part of the basement. “The way people honour each other is different from relationship to relationship. Watch your head.”

He walked down to the bottom and she nudged him to the right with the end of the rifle barrel, and he turned and waited beside another door. She opened this one with a key and flicked a switch. He was hit with the stench almost at the same moment the light reached his eyes. It was a smell that made him recoil. She led him in, and he put his hand to his mouth to filter the air. The guard named Gene was lying on a packed dirt floor, the earth around his head stained a wet purple. “What will happen, Detective, is that I’m going to radio my skip in a couple of minutes and tell her and your people to come on up here. And they’re going to wait at the distance I tell them to until I’m satisfied everything that needs doing is done. And then you can come out and dust yourself off. How does that sound?”